The food blog Serious Eats is covering a new cookbook, “The Sriracha Cookbook” under their Cook The Book series. I love this series of articles. They take a cookbook and will cook 5 of the recipes from the book and post the recipes online. It gives you a great deal of information on the book in short yummy bites. They also give you the chance to win one of five copies by simply posting a comment to the article.

Our favorite use for the condiment with the rooster on the bottle is to simply mix it with a little soy sauce to use as a dipping sauce. So good. Check out the article at Serious Eats and give the book a look. The small book with 50 recipes from Ten Speed Press is eliciting rave reviews on Amazon, The Sriracha Cookbook: 50 .

The Columbus Public Library currently owns 9 titles of this book.

Add your own comment here to Cook the Book: ‘The Sriracha Cookbook’ for your chance to win a book.

1. Cake: One of the easiest recipes simply involves using traditional boxed cake mix. Take 3 tablespoons of cake mix and mix with one tablespoon of milk. Pour into greased pan and bake for about 15 minutes.  Average price for Easy Bake Cake mix is around $5.50. You can buy a full size cake mix for this price and can find cake mix on sale for a couple of dollars.
2. Children’s Cookie Mix
   • 1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
   • 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
   • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
   • 3/4 cup brown sugar — packed
   • 1/2 cup vegetable shortening

   Combine ingredients in a bowl until mixture is thoroughly mixed. Divide mixture by 8 and store in airtight containers for up to 12 weeks. One mixture pack will make about 9 cookies. To use mix, combine 1 mix pack with 2 teaspoons water.

3. Brownies
   • 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
   • 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
   • 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
   • 4 teaspoons chocolate syrup
   • 2 tablespoons flour

   Combine ingredients until batter is smooth. Pour into pan and bake for 12 minutes.

Here are few sites that have additional recipes. Have fun baking.

Budget 101
Easy Bake Over Recipes
The Fun Place
Kiddio

You could use this technique for turkey sliders, burgers, meatballs etc. We bought lean ground turkey for this recipe. As mentioned in a previous post, ground turkey can have a very high fat content. Check the label.

Recipe: Copy Cat Taco Bell Taco Seasoning

Summary: A slight variation on the recipe floating around the internet. Original recipe calls for beef bouillon cubes which has been omitted from this recipe. Just too much salt for our taste. This recipe will season 1 to 1.5 lbs of meat or beans.

This recipe is adapted from a recipe in The Herbal Kitchen: Cooking with Fragrance and Flavor by Jerry Traunfeld

What! We routinely used it in spaghetti, chili and many other recipes that called for ground beef. Taking my dad to task, I finally looked at the label. Turns out, as usual, he is right.

The common ground beef sold in our grocery stores is 80/20, 90/20 and even lower ratios of fat. The last roll of frozen ground turkey that I bought was Butterball brand ground turkey. The fat content of the roll is 25%. Even more crazy is that they put “50% less fat than beef”. That may have been true in the past with higher fat percentages, but, it simply isn’t true with the commonly sold ground beef in our local grocery stores.

Luckily, you can further reduce the amount of fat in ground beef simply by draining the excess fat after browning and rinsing under hot water. A study by the Journal of The American Dietetic Association recently confirmed that you can reduce the amount of fat by 50% by simply following this procedure.

Make sure to keep reading those labels.

Included is Buffalo Wild Wings Medium, Spicy Garlic, Hot and Caribbean Jerk Sauces.

Original recipe can be found at Meemos Kitchen.

The recipe was from a Vegetarian Times compilation cookbook. They actually have two separate loaf recipes but the only real difference between them is one of them contains cashews. My wife isn’t a big fan of nuts in her food so I decided to make the recipe without nuts.

The recipe is mainly lentils (LOVE THEM) and bulgur. I hadn’t worked with bulgur before but it is quite simple. You can cook it like couscous if you want. Just add boiling water and let sit. This recipe suggested cooking for 15 minutes but was totally unnecessary. Don’t confuse bulgur with cracked wheat. They are different, bulgur is wheat that has been steamed, dried and cracked, making it a quick cooking grain. Cracked wheat on the other hand is simply cracked wheat and requires longer cooking times.

Unfortunately, even with the enjoyment of learning about bulgur, the recipe was disappointing. We served it to the kids who were excited because they thought it was meatloaf. They instantly made horrible faces and announced that it wasn’t very good. I figure that I have a more advanced palate. Unfortunately, my reaction was much the same. It was flavorless. It wasn’t dried out but nothing really helped it taste like anything. I tried to melt cheese on top of one slice and that was unsuccessful. I poured copious amounts of hot pepper sauce over another slice and that was decent, assuming that you like hot pepper sauce.

We wont be making that recipe again, but would love to hear from anyone who has a vegetarian loaf recipe that actually tastes like something.

Recipe: Classic Beef Stroganoff in a Slow Cooker

Recipe is adapted from Classic Beef Stroganoff recipe in Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes by Better Home and Gardens. The recipe can be prepped in less than 30 minutes and be ready for you when you get home. Certainly not as good as my mother-in-law’s Stroganoff, but I will let my wife carry that mantle.